Monday ~ December 19, 2022

 Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. 

Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future.

~ William Wordsworth

Sunday ~ December 18, 2022

It is not suffering that is precious, but the concentric pearlescence with which we contain it. The raw grit of anguish will never be in short supply. There is enough of it in the happiest life to serve these instructive purposes., and there always will be. We are more sympathetic to Holocaust survivors than to malcontent children of privilege, but we all have our darkness, and the trick is making something exalted of it.

Andrew Solomon, b. 1963

Sunday ~ November 27, 2022

 Take this to heart: You must gain control of your habits; 

First over stomach, then sleep, and then luxury, and anger.

What brings you shame, do not do unto others, nor by yourself.

The highest of duties is honor od self.

Let justice be practiced in words as in deeds;

Then make the habit, never inconsiderately to act;

Neither forget that death is appointed to all;

That possessions here gladly gathered, here must be left.

Pythagoras, 570 - 495 BCE

Wednesday ~ November 23, 2022

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A good life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet.

Annie Dillard, b. 1945

Tuesday ~ November 22, 2022

 Color - Caste - Denomination - 

These - are Time's Affair - 

Death's diviner Classifying

Does not know they are -

As in sleep - All Hue forgotten -

Tenets - put behind -

Death's large - Democratic fingers

Rub away the Brand -

Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886

Monday ~ November 21, 2022

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or books that are written in a foreign tongue. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live your way some distant day into the answers.

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875 - 1926

Sunday ~ November 20, 2022

 Today is a new day. You will get out of it just what you put into it... If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, there is always another chance for you, And supposing you have tried and failed, again and again, you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.

Mary Pickford, 1892 - 1979

Saturday ~ November 19, 2022

This ambitious foul infirmity,

In having much, torments us with defect

Of that we have; so then we do neglect

The thing we have.

William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

Friday ~ November 18, 2022

Here is a mystery: If sweeping through the door of my heart there moves continually a genuine love for you, it bypasses all your hate and all your indifference and gets through to you at your center. You are powerless to do anything about it. You may keep alive devious ways the fires of your bitter heart, but they cannot get through to me. Underneath the surface of all the tension, something else is at work. It is utterly impossible for you to keep another from loving you.

Howard Thurman, 1899 - 1981

Thursday ~ November 17, 2022

 Not in the solitude

 Alone may we commune with Heaven,

 or see Only savage wood And sunny vale, the present Deity;

 Or only hear its voice

 Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice.

Even here do I behold Thy steps, Almighty! - here, amidst the crowd,

 Through the great city rolled, With everlasting murmur deep and loud -

Choking the ways that wind

'Mongst the proud piles, the work of humankind.

William Cullen Bryant, 1794 - 1878

Wednesday ~ November 16, 2022

Thank you, faithful things!

Thank you, world!

To know that the city is still there,

that the woods are still there,

and the houses, and the hum of traffic and the slow cows grazing in the field:

that the earth continues to turn and time hasn't stopped,

that we come back whole to suck the sweet marrow of day,

thank you, bright morning,

thank you, thank you!

Mark Strand, 1934 - 2014

Tuesday ~ November 15, 2022

PPI report for October:

 PPI up .2 vs up .4

Tuesday ~ November 15, 2022

 Stars littering the ground,

 leaves tattering the sky

Somewhere someone dies

Somewhere someone's born

Somewhere a chalice flares,

stirring some clenched hand to open,

 love to overflow

Somewhere opposites conjoin:

seen folding into unseen, unseen into seen

Somewhere words are soaring

up, then down, then up again

along the angels' ladder linking the stars speckling the sky,

the leaves playing on the ground.

Phoebe Hoss, 1926 - 2017

Sunday ~ November 13, 2022

 It isn't the thing you do, dear,

It's the thing you leave undone

That gives you a bit of a heartache

Ast setting of the sun.

The tender word forgotten,

The letter you did not write,

The flowers you did not send, dear,

Are your haunting ghosts at night.

Margaret E. Sangster, 1838 - 1912

Saturday ~ November 12, 2022

Moral virtue is a mean that lies between two vices, one of excess and the other of deficiency, and... it aims at hitting both in feelings and actions. So it is hard to be good, for surely it is hard in each instance to find the mean, just as it is hard to find the center of a circle. It is easy to get angry or to spend money - anyone can do that. But to act in the right way toward the right person, in due proportion, at the right time, for the right reason, and in the right manner - that is not easy, and not everyone can do it.

Aristotle, 384 - 322 BCE

Friday ~ November 11, 2022

 I think continually of those who were truly great.

Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history

Through the corridors of light where the hours are suns,

Endless singing. Whose lovely ambition was that their lips, still touched with fire,

Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.

And who hoarded from the spring branches

The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms. 

Stephen Spender, 1909 - 1995

Thursday ~ November 10, 2022

There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern. The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to the holiness in time.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1907 - 1972

Wednesday ~ November 9, 2022

 These days are dangerous.

Virtue is choked with foul Ambition,

And Charity chased hence by

Rancour's hand.

William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

Monday ~ November 7, 2022

 A Charm invests a face

Imperfectly beheld - 

The lady dare  not lift her Veil

For fear it be dispelled - 

But peers beyond her mesh  - 

And wishes - and denies - 

Lest Interview - annul a want

That Image - satisfies - 

Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886

Sunday, November 6, 2022

 The things that haven't been done before

Are the tasks worthwhile today;

Are you one of the flock that follows, or

Are you one that shall lead the way?

Are you one or the timid souls that quail

at the jeers of a doubting crew,

Or dare you, whether you win or fail,

Strike out for a goal that's new?

~ Edgar Guest, 1881 - 1959

Saturday ~ November 5, 2022

 ...the odds against us are endless, our chances of being alive together statistically nonexistent; still we have made it, alive in a time when rationalists in square hats and hatless Jehovah's Witnesses agree that it is almost over, alive with our lively children who - but for endless if's - might have missed out of being alive together with marvels and follies and longings and lies and wishes and error and humor and mercy and journeys and voices and faces and colors and summers and mornings and knowledge and tears and chance.

Lisa Mueller, 1924 - 2020

Friday ~ November 4, 2022

 A person will worship something - Have doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts - but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

Ralph Waldo Enerson, 1803 - 1882

Thursday ~ November 3, 2022

 Every day, I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, 

that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.

It was what I was born for-

to look, to listen,

to lose myself inside this soft world -

to instruct me over and over in joy

and acclamation.

Mary Oliver, 1935 - 2009

Wednesday ~ November 2, 2022

 In the name of the Bee - 

And of the Butterfly _ 

And of the Breeze - Amen!

Emily Dickenson, 1830 - 1886

Tuesday ~ November 1, 2022

 I am in need of music that would flow

Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,

Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,

With Melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.

Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,

Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,

A song to fall like water on my head,

And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:

A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool

Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep

To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,

And floats forever in a moon-green pool,

Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

Elizabeth Bishop, 1911 - 1979

Monday ~ October 31, 2022

Concerning all acts of creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A  whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no one could have dreamt would have come their way.

W.H. Murray, 1913 - 1996

Sunday ~ October 30, 2022

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 - 1962

Saturday ~ October 29, 2022

We can always be sure of one thing - That the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own contentment. this is not a lesson that is confined to the Testaments.

Christopher Hitchens, 1949 - 2011

Friday ~ October 28, 2022

The day comes when remaining the same becomes more painful than the risk to grow. And when that happens there are many goodbyes. We leave old patterns, old friends, old lovers,old ideas, nd some cherished beliefs. Loss and growth are so often one and the same.

Phoebe Eng, b. late 20th c.

Wednesday ~ October 26, 2022

Instead of polishing the bombs of holy war

What if sex was holy and war was obscene

And it wasn't twisted, what a wonderful dream

Living for love, unafraid of the end

Forgiveness is the only real revenge

So we can heal each other and fill each other

We can break these walls between each other

Baby, blow by blow and brick by brick

Keep yourself open, yourself open

We can heal each other and fill each other

We can break these walls between each other

Baby, blow by blow and brick by brick

Alicia Keys, b. 1981

Change is Constant:

 It is easy to miss incremental shifts over time. The universe is dynamic and ever-changing. We are experts in the way the world used to be. FLUX is a persistent state of affairs. This means we must constantly check our own knowledge base as it ages out of currency and decays over time.

Tuesday~ October 25, 2022

But all the fighting in the world will not help us if we do not also hope. What I'm trying to cultivate is not blind optimism but what the philosopher Jonathan Lear calls radical hope. "What makes this hope radical", Lear writes, "is that it is directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is." Radical hope is not so much something you have but something you practice; it demands flexibility, openness, and what Lear describes as "imaginative excellence." Radical hope is our best weapon against despair, even when despair seems justifiable; it makes the survival of the end of your world possible. Only radical hope could have imagined people like us into existence. And I believe that it will help us create a better, more loving future.

Junot Diaz, b. 1968

Sunday ~ October 24, 2022

Struggling with others is the definition of war; struggling with oneself is the definition of peace. What is the nature of struggle with oneself? The first [aspect of the struggle}] is to make one's thought, speech, and actions answer the demands of one's own ideal.

Hazrat Inayat Khan, 1882 - 1927

Saturday ~ October 22, 2022

The Winter being over,

In order comes the Spring,

Which doth green herbs discover,

 And cause the birds to sing.

The night also expired,

Then comes the morning bright,

 Which is so much desired,

 By all that love the light.

This may learn

Them that mourn,

 To put their grief to flight: 

The Spring succeedeth Winter,

 And day must follow night.

An Collins, 1640s - 1650s

Thursday ~ October 20, 2011

Believe in yourself when no one else does. No one will believe you can do it until you do, so you have to want your own dreams. Others can want your dreams for you, but you're the only one who can make them happen, and you're the only one who can succeed or fail in reaching them.

Becca Martin, b. 1994

Monday ~ October 17, 2022

 I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island many years ago. It was December, and I was doing a story about how the homeless suffer in the winter months. He and I sat on the edge of wooden supports, dangling our feet over the side, and he told me about his schedule, panhandling the Boulevard when the summer crowds were gone, sleeping in a church when the temperature went below freezing, hiding from the police amid the Tilt_A-Whirl and the Cyclone and some of the other seasonal rides.

Thursday, August 18, 2022

 I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly shift from a "thing-oriented" society" to a "person-oriented" society...

Tuesday ~ April 26, 2022

There is in me something mysterious that nothing is able to grasp, something that no thought or feeling can help me know. It appears only when I am not caught in the web of my thoughts and emotions. It is the unknown, which cannot be grasped with what I know.

Jeanne Matignon de Salzman, 1889 - 1990

Wednesday ~ March 30, 2022

 All are architects of Fate,

Working in these walls of Time;

Some with massive deeds and great,

Some with ornaments of rhyme.

Nothing useless is, or low;

Each thing in its place is best;

And what seems but idle show

Strengthens and supports the rest...

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,

With a firm and ample base;

And ascending and secure

Shall to-morrow find its place.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1822

Thursday ~ March 17, 2022

The most alive thing about us is what we are when thought breaks off and our minds can go no further - for that is where our yearning begins, our inconsolable yearning, and the loneliness that begets compassion, the forlornness that prepares the heart for love. And that is the wilderness where all is tested, where doubt can go no further...

And in the mind's dimness a light will shine; in the spirit's stillness it will be as though a voice had spoken; the heart that was lonely will know who it was it yearned for, and the life of the soul will be one with the life that is God.

A. Powell Davies, 1902 - 1857